1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup system, and more particularly, to an image pickup apparatus and an image pickup system capable of serially transmitting digital data of an image acquired by image pickup of an object.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a transmission scheme for serially transmitting digital data of an image acquired by image pickup of an object using an image pickup apparatus such as an endoscope, a differential transmission scheme such as an LVDS (low voltage differential signaling) scheme is conventionally used, which is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2007-167590.
To be more specific, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2007-167590 discloses an endoscope apparatus having a configuration that converts a video signal from an endoscope to digital parallel signals, generates, from respective bits of the parallel signals, a bit data set that combines bit data per bit and inverted data of the bit data, converts the bit data set to serial data and transmits the serial data using the LVDS scheme.